Google Analytics Comes to the iPhone

Google has recently released its much anticipated Analytics iPhone app providing users with a website monitoring platform in the palm of your hand. iPhone users should be excited as the app has been available on the android operating systems for quite some time now. The biggest upside to the iPhone app is that it’s free, unlike several other 3rd party apps, which often deliver a poor user experience due to the quirks with GA integration.

Highlights of the app include:

Overview of Website Metrics

This feature shows top-level metrics, allowing the user to keep track of visitors, page views and traffic by channel

Real-Time data

Shows the number of active users on a site and other basic information

Graphical Reports

Some reports include:

Visualize visitors over time

Page views by time of day

The app mirrors what the GA website does so well, but provides that great granular level of information on your phone. While the app was great before, it was limited to just android phone users and Google has now opened the app to a larger set of users.

The one drawback of the app is that it is for reporting only and does not allow for any changes to be made directly through the app itself.

Forward3D Insight:

The app provides access to an already great product via your iPhone. Top level metrics and the graphical reporting within a seamless interface makes it easy for users to operate the platform on their phone, thus lessening the frustration of the complex desktop interface. If you need to monitor site performance and find yourself on the road, this is certainly one of the best apps for clients/advertisers who rely on Google Analytics.

After playing with the application for a few days, we can say with certainty that the reporting interface is clean & easy to understand. We did notice a few small bugs when navigating the app, however the issues were small and did not affect the overall user experience. The only real issue we can note is that if you have multiple GA accounts/clients under one log-in, it will not be immediately apparent which client you are looking at. The account / client names are within sub-menus and are not on the opening screen, making it difficult to see which account is actually being viewed.

Bottom Line: Overall it is a great app and the fact that it’s free certainly makes it worth the download!